Well Water

Note to self: always check to be sure that the rust remover salt in the water softening system is full before printing in the darkroom. Nothing worse than spending several hours printing, putting the prints in the wash with clear clean water, then returning a half hour later to discover the water is all brown. Gah!! I had plenty of the salt on hand, but hadn't looked into the container that holds it in several weeks. Added three bags late yesterday, today, the water water should clear up and I will be reprinting on Wednesday (a rare week with darkroom time, yay, but bumming that I have to redo stuff).

I may have misunderstood. Just for clarity, be sure to wait until after the water softener has cycled. Ours is set to purge at 3 AM. Any water prior to that will still be rusty.

I added an inline canister filter from Lowes or Home Depot between the water softener and the darkroom sink. I have 3 and 1 micron filter choices. This was to get those final little dark spots rather than the whole rush of rusty covered by the water softener. It slows the flow considerably, but is worth the wait at our house out in the country. I turn it off to regain normal speed when I am not in the darkroom. We run drinking water through a Brita in the kitchen.

Looking forward to meeting you in MI.

John Powers

"If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world." Miroslav Tichı

I might add something like that, John. Yes, I think it will cycle through today.... ours is set similarly to purge in the middle of the night. Water is looking less brown this morning, but still a little cloudy. Hopefully, by tomorrow, it'll be clear again. If not, I'll wait another day. I'm looking forward to Michigan as well!!

aww, crap... something else that I hadn't thought about. I'm building a darkroom and I'm on well water. We don't even have a water softener. It just comes out of the ground and into the tank. I thought I had it all planned out.

I'm on well water as well and we have an excellent softening system that is also equipped to remove iron. But I also have an inline canister filter for my darkroom. The cartridges start out white and as I routinely change them they are always black after a period of time. I definitely recommend installing one for each water line in the darkroom.

aww, crap... something else that I hadn't thought about. I'm building a darkroom and I'm on well water. We don't even have a water softener. It just comes out of the ground and into the tank. I thought I had it all planned out.

Ed

You might not have issues. Then, again, you might have big problems. It depends on your water quality.

Have your well water tested. Make sure they check for iron, sulfur and dissolved minerals. Most water quality testing labs do but just check to be sure.

Since my forty year old submersible pump and the iron pipe it hung from were replaced with newer materials (primarily the horribly rusted pipe is now plastic), I see no rust problems straight out of the ground. I do mix my processing chemicals with distilled water, but general rinsing actions with well water have been OK. The problems probably vary wildly in different geographic areas and even between wells, you just have to test and experiment.